Mark Thompson said Panorama's allegations of corruption among Fifa executive committee members were of 'public concern'. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

The director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, has defended the Panorama exposé of alleged bribery at Fifa which has been accused of damaging England's chances of hosting the 2018 World Cup.

The programme, which was broadcast three days before the announcement in Zurich on Thursday on who would host the 2018 World Cup, made claims about four of the 22-strong executive committee of world football's governing body.

The Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, is understood to have referred to the "evils of the media" in a speech to the executive immediately before they voted. There has been widespread speculation that the Panorama programme ended England's chances of winning the right to host the 2018 World Cup. Russia was awarded the right to host the tournament after England won only two votes in the first round of the ballot of Fifa executive committee members.

Thompson said the BBC had been "right" to screen the Panorama programme, which he said contained "significant information about matters of very serious public interest and public concern".

He told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 that the information was received by the Panorama team only a few weeks before the programme was broadcast.

"They spent time checking the provenance of this information, putting a number of specific allegations to the people involved, as we must do, and when the programme was ready to transmit, we transmitted it," he said. "I have to say that I believe that in the end, although I understand that there are often reasons to believe that transmitting a programme might be impolitic or inconvenient, if you believe that you have a matter of real public concern to broadcast, there have got to be overwhelmingly powerful reasons for not broadcasting.

"I believe we were right to broadcast and I believe we have very strong support from the British public in broadcasting."